Anna To The Infinite Power (18 page)

They made their way out to the patio and over the wall into the alley, which was deserted. Earlier, the day had been overcast. Now a fog, heavy in spots, was moving in from the ocean, bringing with it an early twilight. “We’re in luck,” Rowan said.

“But they won’t run the hydrofoils in fog.”

“That’s all right. We’ll find someplace to hide until morning if we have to.”

Anna stuck close to Rowan as they made their way through the alley and out onto the road. In the fading misty light, she could, now and then, make out the white uniform of some medical person, hurrying from one building to another.

“Just act as if we have business here, and no one will bother us.” His easy success in reaching her had made him brave.

Anna had to admire his courage and coolness. Her own heart was beating wildly. In some areas the fog lay in thick patches. Rowan plunged through these as if he knew where he was going. As the gray closed around her, Anna felt panicky, her sense of direction gone, certain that the next step would lead her off the edge of the world. When they emerged from the cloud and into a thin mist where buildings and people were again visible, her tension broke in relief.

Finally Rowan reached the building for which he’d been heading, a huge warehouse. “This is where the crew was taking supplies when I followed them. If it’s still open, we’ll hide inside until morning. In this fog, nothing will be running tonight.” The sound of a distant foghorn confirmed his words.

“Our luck is still holding. The door’s open. Somebody must be working inside. Don’t make a sound.”

One of a pair of double doors stood ajar. Rowan slipped around it and into the shadows along the wall, Anna after him. To the rear of the building, a light burned on a desk. They both had a quick glimpse of the back of a man seated there, poring over papers. Rowan and Anna took the opposite direction, tiptoeing around tall stacks of boxes, until Rowan found a satisfactory spot to hide. Then they both sat quietly on the floor, hidden by the cartons all around them. Rowan whispered, “We’ll stay here until he closes up.”

They sat in silence for what seemed like hours to Anna. Finally the man began making the kinds of noises that suggested he was preparing to leave. A loud click plunged the place into darkness. Another click, and an overhead nightlight cast a dim light over everything. The sound of the man’s footsteps echoed through the building and, when the double door squeaked closed, disappeared. Another click padlocked them in.

“Oh, Rowan, we couldn’t get out now if we wanted to,” Anna whispered.

“Relax. I noticed a side door. That’s got to lock from the inside.” He got up and stretched. “Right now, I need something to fortify me. How about one of those bars you brought along?”

Anna, too, got to her feet. She dug into the flight bag for the food. Then they both perched on the edge of one of the boxes while they ate. As Anna nibbled on one of the bars, she found herself staring at a calendar on the warehouse wall. She thought of the one in her room and of how she would not be drawing a line through that date, the twenty-seventh of February. Then she glanced at Rowan and the significance of the date hit her. “Wasn’t this the day for your last play-off recital?” she asked.

He avoided looking at her, afraid some of his disappointment might show in his eyes. “That’s right.” He tried to sound indifferent.

She studied him curiously. “Did you postpone it?”

“I--well, yes -- yes, I did.” He just couldn’t bring himself to talk about it at that moment. Besides, he told himself, rescuing Anna was the only important thing now. If he could pull that off, it would be worth a hundred scholarships. He quickly changed the subject. “Did Michaela tell you she was leaving?” Anna thought she must have misunderstood. “What do you mean--leaving?”

“She’s taking another job in northern California. At least, I suppose that’s where she meant. She just said up north.”

Once that news would have delighted Anna. Since she’d been on the island, she had often thought of Michaela. Was it she who had said, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears”? Surely, there was some truth in the words. Anna thought again of the many facets of her teacher’s personality. She was Michaela, the disciplinarian, Michaela, the quoter of famous people and wise sayings, Michaela, the musician with fire in her fingers, Michaela, the meditator in a leotard. Anna wondered how many other Michaelas there were whom she would never have the chance to know now. “I’ll miss her.”

“Me, too.” When Rowan finished his bar, he said, “Well, it’s not exactly a five-course dinner, but it helps.” Again he got to his feet. “I’m going to investigate that side door.”

Anna, afraid to stay alone, grabbed the flight bag with her precious present and hurried after him. Just as soon as they’d satisfied themselves about the door, she decided she would open her gift.

Rowan made right for the door and examined the lock. “Just as I thought--dead bolt.”

“Then we’re not locked in.”

“Of course not. See here --” He turned the lock to show her, then pulled the door wide open.

They both stared shocked into a blinding light. “Over here, Reilly,” a man’s voice said. “I guess this young fellow’s had enough time on his own.”

Rowan and Anna were both too stunned to move. Anna thought, they knew all the time that Rowan was here. They knew. She might have known it would be useless. There was no escaping them.

Rowan thought, I’ve failed. I’ve failed Anna. It didn’t matter what they did to him, but what would they do to her now? “Oh, Anna, I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“Take her back to her room, Reilly,” the voice said. “You, young fellow, come with me.”

A foghorn moaned continuously. How sad it sounded, Anna thought, as she lay sleepless in the dark of her room. A grief-filled voice mourning for lost ships. Or lost souls. Sometimes she imagined it was calling her name. Annn-na . . . Annn-na . . . Mourning for her?

She worried about Rowan. Where had they taken him? What would they do to him? Nothing, she told herself. After all, they couldn’t know she had guessed that all the Anna Zimmerman clones were here and that she had told Rowan. Not even the telephone operator could have known what she and Rowan were talking about--she certainly was not in on government secrets. “But why were you running away with her?” they would ask him. What would he tell them? Knowing Rowan, he would probably say, “It just seemed like a good idea.” Perhaps he could pass it off as an adventure. Yes, that was what he would do, and they would merely send him home. Tomorrow he would be back on the mainland.

And she would be alone again.

She thought of the following day, fully accepting the idea that there was no way to escape, no way to get off the island undetected. The man who’d taken her back to her room had told her that they had known every movement of Rowan’s, had left him free only to find out what he was up to. No, escape was impossible.

How foolish of her to have even tried to run home with Rowan. If they had made it, what good would it have done? Something dreadful was happening to her, and apparently nothing could stop it. Why make other people suffer watching her? Better to resign herself to whatever end they had in mind for her. She was sure it would be painless, and all for the best. The only solution. Soon it would be over. All over. She would be over--her life. No, Anna Zimmerman’s life. Yes, all for the best.

The melancholy call of the foghorn insinuated itself into her thoughts. Annn-na . . . Annn-na . . . Who would mourn for Anna? Anyone? Mom? Dad? Rowan? Rowan, who had postponed his play-off recital to try to rescue her? Would he mourn?

Anna sat up suddenly and turned on her bedside lamp. He had brought her a present and she had never even seen it, had almost forgotten about it. She got up and found the flight bag on the dresser where she’d left it. She took out the gift and carefully unwrapped it, then lifted the lid of the outer cardboard box to stare down at the Renaissance lovers. Was it what she thought it was? She picked it up. Yes. A music box. And different from any she could remember seeing at Michaela’s. Where had he ever found it?

When she turned it over to see what melody it contained, her eyes misted over. “The Love Theme.” How hurt she had felt that day when he’d refused to learn the piece to try a duet with her. He had acted so annoyed, had hardly listened to her. Yet he’d obviously remembered the name of the song. Was this a way of saying he was sorry? She rather thought it was.

Anna ran her fingers over the cool porcelain top, over the figures of the lovers. Quaint, Mom would call it. Charming. Appealing. Yes, just the kind of thing Anna had never been able to resist stealing when she came upon it in some carelessly guarded store. But that had been another Anna. With all the emotional turmoil she had gone through these past weeks, the same things no longer seemed important. This little music box had value to her only as a carefully selected gift, one Rowan had chosen because he remembered she liked the tune.

She wound the key, placed the box on the bedside table, slipped into bed, and turned out the light. Although the tinkly little tune vied with the foghorn, its music soon began to ease the tension inside her. After a time her mind felt clearer--more orderly. Orderly? She had forgotten to cross off the date on the calendar. Nothing orderly about that.

The date--the twenty-seventh of February. The day for Rowan’s last play-off recital. A concert, she remembered now. But he had postponed it. Postponed it? How could he postpone a concert? She thought of how his eyes had not met hers when he’d told her. Of course. She should have realized. It seemed so obvious now that she wondered why she hadn’t seen it earlier. Rowan had given up his chance for the scholarship to try to rescue her. Rowan wanted that scholarship more than anything in the world. Why would he give it up for her?

Someone who cares about you. His words came back to her. Rowan cares about me, she thought. She was aware now of her own feeling for him. She loved Rowan, cared enough about him to regret deeply what she had cost him. And he loved her. For what else is love but caring about and wishing another well?

If even one person loves you, Anna thought, then surely you must be somebody. She listened to the tune on the music box for a long, long time, turning over these enormous thoughts in her head, expecting them to keep her awake until morning. In spite of herself, sleep finally came, and with it, the strange dream.

Annn-na . . . Annn-na . . . The foghorn. Let me come in, Anna. Let me come in. No, it was not the foghorn. It was the presence, the presence she had so often felt waiting, waiting in some nether world. Let me come in, Anna. It’s time.

Anna knew now who it was who called. She no longer felt the need to resist. She was ready now to accept her true self, her uniqueness, that emotional part of her that could never be duplicated, that part that made her not a mother’s child, not a father’s child, but her own person. At last, Anna was ready to meet her, the woman she would become.

But it was all too late . . . too late . . .

In the morning Anna felt like a new and different person, but she had to keep reminding herself that she was still only an experiment that had failed. And today was the day that they would eradicate all evidence of that experiment.

The attendant had brought Anna breakfast as usual, but she hadn’t touched a bite. This morning she eyed every ordinary act with suspicion, seeing in each her own end. How would it come? In the food? In another test? She found that she was not at all resigned now to meeting her death. I’ll fight them, she thought. I’ll fight them right up to the last.

When the attendant returned for the tray, she told Anna to pack. “When you’re finished, Dr. Jelliff wants to see you,” she said.

Dr. Jelliff! Just as Anna had suspected. She’d always had the feeling that the other doctors who had routinely tested her here were not a part of the highest hierarchy, that anonymous power she called them. Now, at last, she would face one of them. Good, she thought, burning with anger. She could hardly wait to tell the man what she thought of him, how monstrous she thought the whole experiment. She would look him in the eye and tell him she was not one of the ignorant Anna Zimmermans. She knew what she was and knew what fate was planned for her. She would call him inhuman, call him murderer.

She threw her clothes hurriedly into her suitcase, then carefully placed the music box in the center where the soft materials would cushion it. They would send her things, or rather, her effects, home. She wanted Rowan to have the box. Was he already on the mainland? she wondered. She would ask this Jelliff person.

In that stormy mood she accompanied the attendant to one of the medical buildings. They took the elevator to an office on the top floor, tucked away in what seemed to Anna a very remote corner. No one could possibly hear you scream here. The attendant turned Anna over to a white-uniformed receptionist, who immediately hurried her off to another and even more secluded office. The woman motioned toward a chair near the desk. “Take a seat. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

She left Anna alone to stare at the framed diplomas on the walls, at the furniture, at what obviously were family pictures on the doctor’s desk. Anna glanced around, drumming nervously on the arms of the chair.

After several long minutes the outer door opened again and, to her astonishment, Anna saw the receptionist usher Rowan in. He was saying to the woman, “He’s not getting away with anything! You just tell him that.”

“Suppose you tell him yourself,” she said, and again disappeared out the door.

Rowan strode angrily into the room, then spotted Anna and stopped short, a surprised look on his face. For a moment he just stared at her as if she were a ghost. At length he said, “You’re all right.”

She nodded. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know. The same thing you’re doing here, I guess.” His long legs closed the distance between them with a couple of purposeful strides. “Listen,” he whispered. “Don’t question anything I say. I’ve got a plan. I’m not letting this guy get away with anything.”